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No one ever said that social transformation and the democratization of state–society relations is a picnic. With the radical party culture of Syriza as a guarantee, it is something that can be done, so long as we are conscious that class struggle does not stop at the door step of the party.

It means recovering the capacity for awe and reverence for the sources that sustain life. Once we stand up for this ethic of life, once we include all people, including girls and women, as an integral part of this ethic, we can build a resistance movement that can challenge the corporate forces that if left in power will extinguish us all.

The Liberal policies that were enacted when they were last in government, like cutting funding to popular social programs to pay for corporate tax cuts, are somewhat analogous to a roll up the rim to win contest: most people lose, some get something minor like a coffee or a doughnut, and a tiny minority get the real prizes.

Over the past year, what appeared as hopeful signs, that Left governments were emerging as powerful alternatives to right-wing pro-US regimes, is turning into a historic rout, which will relegate them to the dustbin of history for many years to come. Increasingly, the electorate views the leftist rulers as traitors, who betrayed their supporters at the beck and call of their most egregious class enemies.

Will collectively produced wealth be used to enable students to work and learn free from the burden of wondering how to pay the rent, or will it be siphoned of by tax cuts, leaving students to pay a higher bill for access to institutions whose priorities are less and less determined by academics and students and more by unaccountable owners of money-value wealth?

Following December’s release of the U.S. Senate report on American complicity in torture, Prime Minister Stephen Harper quickly declared, “It has nothing to do whatsoever with the government of Canada.” Despite the CIA’s close relationship with Canadian state security agencies, as well as two judicial inquiries finding Ottawa complicit in the torture of Canadian citizens in Syria and Egypt, Harper preferred to ignore the facts.

Harper’s rhetoric has been coked up with apocalyptic rhetoric, from describing ISIS as everything from a “death cult” (a term more appropriate to NATO, an alliance that has always reserved the right to unleash nuclear weapons and thereby contribute to the end of human life altogether) to a gigantic squid.

The agenda of the developers is to complete the creation of an interwoven hive of business, commerce, upscale recreation and high end housing. Standing in the way of this are enduring pockets of housed poverty and a considerable and growing homeless population.

What could have been resolved in 2009, the outsized role of finance and banking in world affairs, has been resurrected like Frankenstein’s monster to contemplate its existence in a world that is better off without it.

“It doesn’t matter if they’re not using it. History has shown that if the government feels threatened or they seek greater control – and I think that is the trajectory of the corporate state – they will use it.”

Published since 1963, Canadian Dimension is a forum for debate on important issues that face the Canadian Left today, and a source for national and regional politics, labour, economy, world affairs and art.